HBO's Westworld VII: Abort?.Retry.Fail

[Mark Antony]

5 hours ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

William has actually displayed the most realistic reaction to his wounds in the series.

It's really fucking hard to kill a person. The only life threatening gunshot wound he took was the one to his abdomen, and if it missed the liver and kidney he'd be pretty much fine for the short term.

People don't die immediately from pretty much any wound unless you disable the brain or heart. Even the most gruesome injuries to an major artery will leave you living long enough to scream and cry for a few seconds.

Fair enough I think it just stands out when you have hosts wiping out armored security guards with headshots on the reg not to mention that it feels like every host that William shoots dies in one shot regardless of if it’s a headshot or not. But when it’s time for Willian to get shot everyone shooting him loses all sense of accuracy and he gets hit four times in non life threatening spots. You can really feel the tv writers pulling the strings. 

4 hours ago, Triskele said:

*There's something that's been eating at me more and more which is how much the Jimmy Simpson / Ed Harris combo works which is for me really not at all.  Harris is just so Ed Harris with his voice and his delivery and mannerisms that I just never see him as the much older version Simpson, and it actually feels a bit disruptively so when watching the Harris scenes this year.  Maybe in S1 it worked since many viewers didn't know MiB = William until near the end.  

Could not agree more with this. They’ve always felt like two completely different characters to me. Look/sound/act nothing alike. 

[Jace, Extat]

Yeah, but it's not singular to Westworld for every bad guy to be taken down by 1 gunshot to the general center of mass and the heroes clinging to life long enough to keep fighting or recover or impart a dramatic death statement/performance.

Give me a fucking break with that shit. There's plenty of other stuff to scoff at in this season without making standard movie logic tropes into a problem.

In fact, Westworld has a built in excuse for this, being that guests don't actually want to watch a man die in agony of a gunshot to his gut over the course of hours or days so they're designed to 'die' from anything remotely life threatening. 

Fuck, all of Williams' injuries prior to the gutshot are 

1) Shoulder

2) Arm

3) Leg

The leg wound is the most dangerous of those three and it was on the meaty part of the inner thigh where there's not much to hit. 

And I've already explained why the torso wound isn't necessarily a killshot. 

[Mark Antony]

Don’t think anyone said it was singular to Westworld. It’s cool that it doesn’t bother you and it’s not like a deal breaker for me or anything (thought the Angela cradle seduction scene was way dumber) but you can see why people would be bothered by it surely. 

[Jace, Extat]

14 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

Don’t think anyone said it was singular to Westworld. It’s cool that it doesn’t bother you and it’s not like a deal breaker for me or anything (thought the Angela cradle seduction scene was way dumber) but you can see why people would be bothered by it surely. 

Eh, not really. I mean, have you seen a movie before?

And I agree totally that the cradle and the C4 grenade was actually groanworthy. Bitch about that. 

[Relic]

30 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

Yeah, but it's not singular to Westworld for every bad guy to be taken down by 1 gunshot to the general center of mass and the heroes clinging to life long enough to keep fighting or recover or impart a dramatic death statement/performance.

Give me a fucking break with that shit. There's plenty of other stuff to scoff at in this season without making standard movie logic tropes into a problem.

In fact, Westworld has a built in excuse for this, being that guests don't actually want to watch a man die in agony of a gunshot to his gut over the course of hours or days so they're designed to 'die' from anything remotely life threatening. 

Fuck, all of Williams' injuries prior to the gutshot are 

1) Shoulder

2) Arm

3) Leg

The leg wound is the most dangerous of those three and it was on the meaty part of the inner thigh where there's not much to hit. 

And I've already explained why the torso wound isn't necessarily a killshot. 

You're getting super worked up there buddy. MiB should be dead, silly show is silly show. 

[Relic]

Speaking of which, are the Delos TAC teams the worst such squads since 24? They get mowed down in the open by six shooters, ffs. The robots just stride down corridors without taking cover and wipe out just about every red shit in the building. ZZZZZZZ

[Ramsay B.]

49 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

Could not agree more with this. They’ve always felt like two completely different characters to me. Look/sound/act nothing alike. 

Yup. I still have to kinda remind myself sometimes that they’re the same person. In episode 4 with James Delos the problem was right in your face too, with younger and older William coming in the room. 

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, Relic said:

You're getting super worked up there buddy. MiB should be dead, silly show is silly show. 

Jace gets annoyed at the oddest shit man. Trust me, I think it's weird too.

2 minutes ago, Relic said:

Speaking of which, are the Delos TAC teams the worst such squads since 24? They get mowed down in the open by six shooters, ffs. The robots just stride down corridors without taking cover and wipe out just about every red shit in the building. ZZZZZZZ

Now that's another very fair criticism.

[red snow]

Blood loss alone makes Williams continued existence debatable irrespective of how many vital organs they may be missing all the time.

However synthetic blood exists now. Maybe he keeps topping up somewhere? And bandages must have special healing properties.

[RumHam]

8 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

 

Wait. I don't think so. I disagree with your interpretation.

The Cradle is a massive bank of supercomputers where the entire history of the hosts is stored. When they bring a host in for repairs, they download the memories of the hosts to the Cradle. If the host dies every day, they get brought in and the memories of that day are archived and they start from a clean plate the next day. When they change a host's narrative, like Maeve's homesteader timeline, those memories go to the Cradle and their new storyline is downloaded. Before Abernathy was Dolores' father, he was actor/cannibal. He malfunctions because when he saw the picture of William's wife in Season 1 it somehow triggered access to some past memories, making him malfunction. Question - had they already downloaded some or all of the secret information to him? I assume so, because I don't think the time between Abernathy being put into storage and the rebellion was very long.

Ford's memories have been downloaded to a control unit, which Bernard took from that secret lab to the Cradle. Bernard's control unit was pulled out of his head and placed in the Cradle, which is how he then met Ford. How Ford joined his memories with Bernard's is a question I doubt we will get an answer to, other than the fact Ford knows how the system works.

Their visit to the house was a visit to the memory of the house stored in the Cradle, just like Bernard going to the saloon. It's not some kind of virtual reality where Arnold designed the house. There must have been a real house where Bernard and Dolores lived for years while Bernard was being fine-tuned, not a virtual house.

Lol, or at least that's my interpretation. There is a real house Arnold built in the park somewhere, and once he was happy with it he built another house outside the park for his family to live in.

Only Ford's memories exist, because Delos' secret project doesn't work, as he explained to Bernard. Somehow, at the point where he tells Bernard that Bernard will not survive, Ford manages to join his memories with Bernard. A damn good thing, because half an hour later Angela blows up the Cradle and Ford would have been truly dead. His transfer into Bernard's control unit is what unclogs the system, as both Elsie and the woman tech with the rescue force can see. Ford was running the system from inside the Cradle, and once he leaves with Bernard's control unit his control lifts.

I will watch that scene again, but right now I'm pretty happy with my interpretation.  

I mean, I've only watched it once but I dunno how you interpret the "he built it here first" line in your scenario. He didn't design his home in Ford's memories. Nor does it make sense that he built a physical building on the park grounds and then did it again in the outside world. (Or elsewhere in the park.) It makes way more sense if he used the cradle like someone today would use AutoCAD to design something virtually before building it physically.

[Astromech]

Action-packed, but the Dolores/Maeve convo was the best part of the episode.

Agree with the sentiment that the multiple timelines are tiring.

I'm looking forward to Zahn McClarnon's episode next week.

[red snow]

4 minutes ago, Astromech said:

Action-packed, but the Dolores/Maeve convo was the best part of the episode.

Agree with the sentiment that the multiple timelines are tiring.

I'm looking forward to Zahn McClarnon's episode next week.

Multiple timelines with multiple Bernards on top. Honestly I don't even bother trying to decipher that combo

[Cas Stark]

27 minutes ago, red snow said:

Multiple timelines with multiple Bernards on top. Honestly I don't even bother trying to decipher that combo

Yeah me neither.  The difference between Bernarnold's timelines and last year is that last year they were really telling a story...past and present, it was part of the characters arc.  This year, poor befuddled Bernard's timelines is solely to confuse the audience, and to make matters worse they undercut dramatic tension, I have no idea why they showed the hosts dead, it saps tension, and the audience knows there will be a twist...hosts probably not dead/stay dead.   So I don't see that the timelines this year even matter.

[red snow]

3 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Yeah me neither.  The difference between Bernarnold's timelines and last year is that last year they were really telling a story...past and present, it was part of the characters arc.  This year, poor befuddled Bernard's timelines is solely to confuse the audience, and to make matters worse they undercut dramatic tension, I have no idea why they showed the hosts dead, it saps tension, and the audience knows there will be a twist...hosts probably not dead/stay dead.   So I don't see that the timelines this year even matter.

That's the key difference (and mistake) this season. They think we want to be confused and guessing about the show but not at the price of the story. Last year it made narrative sense (it could work as one or two stories) whereas I think you'd need a map to try and work out what's going on when this year. I guess they might get points for meta trickery if we're supposed to feel like the charaters trying to get to the centre of a maze.

[RumHam]

One thing I was wondering that probably doesn't have any bearing on anything. earlier in the season when they did the "everyone at the party is a host" demonstration for Logan, was that Arnold or a Bernard? I had assumed it was Arnold but then I also have the impression that Arnold's suicide by robot was the reason they needed to secure outside funding from Delos. They way Logan talks in season one I didn't think he was involved while Arnold was alive. 

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, RumHam said:

One thing I was wondering that probably doesn't have any bearing on anything. earlier in the season when they did the "everyone at the party is a host" demonstration for Logan, was that Arnold or a Bernard? I had assumed it was Arnold but then I also have the impression that Arnold's suicide by robot was the reason they needed to secure outside funding from Delos. They way Logan talks in season one I didn't think he was involved while Arnold was alive. 

Ford suggests Arnold was alive when the deal with Delos was struck in season 1 "Arnold begged me not to let you people in... The moneymen"

[RumHam]

8 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

Ford suggests Arnold was alive when the deal with Delos was struck in season 1 "Arnold begged me not to let you people in... The moneymen"

Ahh, right thanks. 

[Fragile Bird]

14 hours ago, RumHam said:

I mean, I've only watched it once but I dunno how you interpret the "he built it here first" line in your scenario. He didn't design his home in Ford's memories. Nor does it make sense that he built a physical building on the park grounds and then did it again in the outside world. (Or elsewhere in the park.) It makes way more sense if he used the cradle like someone today would use AutoCAD to design something virtually before building it physically.

No, Bernard wasn't in Ford's memory, Bernard was in the Cradle where all the memories of all the hosts were backed up. The memory of the house would be there, at the very least, from Dolores' back-ups. She lived there for years with Bernard. And Bernard's memories would have been backed up as well, so his memories of the house are there too. And I assume Ford had his own memories of the house, he would have been there with Arnold many times. And all his memories are now in the Cradle too.

"Bernard: This house...it's so familiar.

Ford:  It ought to be. This is the home Arnold was building for his family. He created it here first. He created everything here.

Bernard:  This is where you created me.

Ford:  I could hardly let you take those first teetering steps in the real world, Bernard. We refined you here, tested you, for many years."

Now, you are making the argument this means it was all done in the Cradle, which would mean that Dolores' control unit would have been removed from her head for years so she could live in the Cradle with Barnard's control unit. 

But in my interpretation she wasn't - she was doing her routine in Westworld. She had her day job, and, I suspect, at the end of the day went to the house to be with Bernard. The house seems to be just a short walk from the town.

Once Bernard was perfected, he went to the 'real world', working alongside humans who never suspected a damn thing. And Dolores then acquired a family farm where she lived with mum and dad. Bernard wasn't ready for the 'real world', working side by side with humans, for a long time, so he was hidden in the perfect place, Arnold's own house. Westworld, after all, is not the real world.

Also, Ford does say 'we'. He certainly didn't have a control unit to rip out of his head to work with Dolores and Bernard in the Cradle.

And if this is all too much to read, sorry.    Just defending my position!

 

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

The thought occurs that the Delos Corporation is basically just the natural extension and progression of a real life company - Facebook. Or it's ilk.

Facebook, and others, are sucking in great swaths of personal information on billions of people in the world. Westworld is where all that could lead! It's a morality play!

[Jace, Extat]

Don't forget that social media is a kind of immortality as well, but it's the very companies that steal your information who control your account after you're dead.